# The Emoji Movie The Emoji Movie is a 2017 Sony Pictures Animation film that drew one of the most hostile pre-release receptions in modern animated cinema, racking up tens of thousands of dislikes on its trailer before earning a 6% Rotten Tomatoes score. The savaging it received from critics and audiences spawned years of copypasta, trailer-dislike pile-ons, Patrick-Stewart-plays-poop jokes, and a dedicated subreddit devoted to mocking the film. ## Origin The project traces to July 21, 2015, when Deadline reported that Sony Pictures Animation had won a near-seven-figure, three-studio bidding war against Warner Bros. and Paramount for a pitch by writer-director Tony Leondis and co-writer Eric Siegel[1]. Leondis had pitched studios with storyboards for the film, and Sony chief Tom Rothman moved aggressively to beat the rival bids[1]. The movie was officially unveiled at CinemaCon 2016, with Sony framing it as a chance for product-placement partnerships with the apps that would appear onscreen[2]. The mockery itself began building during the marketing cycle in 2017. On January 18, 2017, @SonyPictures tweeted that Patrick Stewart had been cast as the Poop emoji, which immediately became a running joke online[6]. On May 16, 2017, Sony Pictures Entertainment uploaded the main trailer to YouTube, and it drew more than 70,000 thumbs-down ratings as the first wave of pile-on built[7]. The film opened July 28, 2017, and critics savaged it; Vox's review ran under the headline treating the movie as a 2017 regret generator[2]. The r/theemojimovie subreddit for mockery and discussion had actually launched on October 10, 2016, well before release[3], and a promotional copy for the film was posted to r/copypasta on January 1, 2017[8]. - **Platform:** Theatrical release (Sony) / YouTube and Reddit (viral mockery) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 2017 ## Overview The Emoji Movie mockery operates on a few recurring beats that fans of hating the film kept hitting across 2017 and after. The first is the trailer-dislike dogpile: the official YouTube trailer was flooded with tens of thousands of thumbs-downs before release, turning the video itself into a signal of the film's reputation[3]. The second is the Patrick Stewart angle, with the Shakespearean actor cast as the voice of a sentient poop emoji, a bit of casting so absurd that it generated jokes on its own before anyone had seen a frame[6]. The third beat is the product-placement critique. Reviewers hammered the fact that the film is largely set inside apps like Candy Crush, Just Dance, and Dropbox, which Vox's Alissa Wilkinson called "one giant ad, dressed up as family-friendly entertainment"[2]. That framing fed copypastas and Reddit threads that mocked the movie as cynical corporate output rather than a kids' film[3]. The fourth is pure insult comedy, including a widely cited Urban Dictionary entry calling it "the epitome of the disgusting pile of garbage Hollywood has become"[9]. Together these threads kept The Emoji Movie alive as a cultural punching bag long after it left theaters, with the title functioning as internet shorthand for a lazy, cynical, product-stuffed studio release[4]. ## How It Spread Mockery of The Emoji Movie built in waves tied to Sony's marketing beats. The r/theemojimovie subreddit was created on October 10, 2016, giving the online hate a central gathering spot months before the trailer dropped[3]. On December 20, 2016, the teaser trailer went up on YouTube and became an early target[5]. The January 18, 2017 Patrick-Stewart-as-Poop tweet from @SonyPictures seeded a joke that outlived the film's release cycle[6], and on January 1, 2017, the r/copypasta subreddit got a promotional-copy post that treated the film with mock reverence[8]. The backlash spiked around the May 16, 2017 trailer upload on YouTube, which drew over 70,000 dislikes and became a reference point for trailer-dislike pile-ons[7]. Character-focused trailers for Gene, Poop, Hi-5, and Smiler had gone up on May 5, 2017, feeding more mockery[5]. By release on July 28, 2017, pans were lined up: Vox called it "one giant ad, dressed up as family-friendly entertainment" and said "everyone involved should be ashamed"[2]. Urban Dictionary entries from users piled on with increasingly extreme insults, framing the film as the "epitome" of corporate rot in Hollywood[9]. The mockery outlasted the theatrical run. In January 2018, The Verge covered the surreal detail that The Emoji Movie was part of the first commercial film program in Saudi Arabia after the country lifted its 35-year ban on movie theaters, pairing it with Captain Underpants at a Jeddah screening[4]. That absurd afterlife, a widely panned film serving as a historic first screening, gave the online community a fresh round of jokes about the film's place in cultural history[4]. ## How to Use The Emoji Movie usually gets invoked as internet shorthand for soulless corporate cinema or as the baseline for how bad an animated movie can be. Common conventions include: posting the trailer's dislike ratio when a new unloved trailer drops[7], comparing a new flop to Emoji Movie numbers, quoting Patrick Stewart's poop casting as proof the film exists[6], and copypasting mock-promotional text that treats the film as a serious artistic achievement[8]. Reaction-image users often screengrab Gene, Hi-5, or Poop with ironic captions. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is The Emoji Movie? The Emoji Movie is a 2017 computer-animated Sony Pictures Animation film directed by Tony Leondis about anthropomorphic emoji characters living inside a teenager's phone, with T. J. Miller as Gene and Patrick Stewart as the Poop emoji[3]. ### Where did The Emoji Movie come from? Sony Pictures Animation won a three-studio bidding war in July 2015 for a pitch by Tony Leondis and Eric Siegel, as first reported by Deadline[1]. ### What does The Emoji Movie mean as a meme? Online, the title is used as shorthand for soulless, product-stuffed studio filmmaking, after critics like Vox called it "one giant ad, dressed up as family-friendly entertainment"[2]. ### How do you use The Emoji Movie reference? It's typically invoked when mocking a bad trailer, when citing trailer-dislike numbers, or when joking about Patrick Stewart's casting as the Poop emoji[6]. ### Is The Emoji Movie still a meme? It stayed a classic reference for bad-movie discussion through its 2018 Saudi Arabia screening coverage and after[4], though it is not actively trending. ### Why did Patrick Stewart voice a poop emoji? Sony Pictures officially announced the casting on January 18, 2017, via a tweet, which immediately became a punchline online[6]. ### How many dislikes did the trailer get? The main YouTube trailer, uploaded May 16, 2017, received over 70,000 thumbs-down ratings according to KYM[3], with the video still live on Sony Pictures Entertainment's channel[7]. ### Was The Emoji Movie really that bad? Vox's review called the film awful and said "everyone involved should be ashamed," criticizing the film as a vehicle for app product placement[2]. ### What was The Emoji Movie originally called? It was first titled Emojimovie: Express Yourself before being renamed to The Emoji Movie in December 2016[3]. ### What role did The Emoji Movie play in Saudi Arabia? In January 2018 it was screened in Jeddah as part of the first public cinema program after Saudi Arabia lifted a 35-year ban on commercial theaters, as reported by The Verge[4]. ## References 1. [https://deadline.com/2015/07/emoji-movie-sony-pictures-animation-anthony-leondis-kung-fu-panda-secrets-of-the-masters-1201482768//]() 2. [https://www.vox.com/summer-movies/2017/7/27/16037862/emoji-movie-review-garbage-fire-poo-patrick-stewart]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-emoji-movie]() 4. [https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/15/16893324/saudi-arabia-the-emoji-movie-cinema-ban-lifted]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV9LYMAEnRA]() 6. [https://twitter.com/SonyPictures/status/821784679388852225]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xl-0Sb_WVM]() 8. [https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/5ldg7x/the_emoji_movie/]() 9. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Emoji%20Movie]() 10. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emoji_Movie]() 11. [https://www.reddit.com/r/theemojimovie/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/the-emoji-movie Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library